Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #7 of Genesis, chapter 26, and we are reading Genesis 26:8-11:

And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife: and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for her. And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us. And Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

I will stop reading there.  We discussed the fact that Isaac had been there for a “prolonged day,” and that does identify with Judgment Day.  Also, Abimelech is a type and figure of Satan.  Remember that word “touch,” when he commanded his people, “He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”  That is what his forefather, who was also called Abimelech, king of Gerar, had said to the Lord when the Lord came to him and told him, “ thou art but a dead man…for she is a man's wife.”  And he said that he had not touched her, and we saw that it said in 1John 5:18:

We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.

Abimelech is a figure of Satan who could not “touch” Sarah, in the first instance, and he also said to his people that they should not touch this man or his wife Rebekah.  So there is consistency with the name of the king and with the fact that the Philistines cannot “touch” the wife of Abraham or,  now, the wife of Isaac.  Abraham and Isaac typify the Lord God and His bride, the elect, or the one that is born again, as it said in 1John 5:18: “…and that wicked one toucheth him not.” 

We understand that, but we have a question when we look at it on the spiritual level.  Of course, we are commanded by God to look at that spiritual level in order to find the Gospel or spiritual teaching.  We have to be consistent, and we have to say, “If Abimelech is a figure of Satan (and he is), and he is looking out a window and seeing Isaac sporting with Rebekah, and he immediately concludes that they are man and wife, why would their sporting make this fact so obvious to Satan?  And what was this window that Abimelech looked out?”  And, again, that would be a picture of Satan looking out at the window.

In the Bible, the word “window” is interesting.  There was a window on the ark.  There was a window in Jericho in Rahab’s house  that God had a lot to say about.  The spies were delivered from those pursuing them by going out the window.  The scarlet thread was placed in that window, marking the house of Rahab, who had helped Israel, and Rahab and her family were not to be destroyed.  We also know that David was let out a window by Michal, Saul’s daughter, and he escaped from men that were trying to kill him.  And the same Michal looked out a window when David was bringing home the ark and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart, thinking that he had made himself look foolish.  It was at that point that David put her away in the sense that he would not have any children with her, but he said that the same damsels she accused him of making himself a fool in front of would have him in honor, and not her.  And the word “window” appears in the New Testament.  It was said of the Apostle Paul, when a governor was pursuing him, that he was let down in a basket from a window and escaped.

One thing we can see from this is that the spies escaped out of a window; David escaped out of a window; Paul escaped out of a window.  We can see that a window is a place of escape when the enemy is pursuing the elect, as the spies represented God’s elect, and David represented the elect, and the Lord Jesus and Paul were a pattern of believers, God’s elect.  So God’s elect somehow can escape out a window.

However, the Bible also is very clear that you cannot enter in through a window.  For example, let us go to Joel 2, where it is speaking of Judgment Day, and we know that from the first couple of verses, in Joel 2:1-2:

Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of JEHOVAH cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.

I will read a few more verses, in Joel 2:3-5:

A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array.

This is describing the battle of Judgment Day when Christ came with ten thousands of His saints, and this is picturing the saints, with the language, “The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run.”  And this ties in with Revelation 9 and the “locusts,” and, later, with Revelation 9 and the “two hundred thousand thousand horsemen” that had been loosed from the river Euphrates.  It is illustrating Christ coming with His elect people in Judgment Day, which has happened and is still happening, because Christ’s “coming” is a continual coming in the clouds, from May 21, 2011 until the prolonged day of judgment is complete, which the Biblical evidence indicates will happen sometime in the year 2033.  So He is coming, and the saints are coming with Him over the course of this time, and it is destroying the earth.  Then it says in Joel 2:7-11:

They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks: Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining: And JEHOVAH shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of JEHOVAH is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?

This confirms that our understanding of the earlier verses is correct, with the language of the sun and moon being dark and the stars withdrawing their shining.  It fits with Matthew 24, and the days “immediately after that tribulation.”  On May 21, 2011 when the Great Tribulation concluded, Christ came spiritually, so this is a spiritual description of what is taking place on the earth in the Day of Judgment.  We do not have time to go through all this, but we are looking only at the fact that “ They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.

These are the elect people of God and, similarly, Christ has come as a “thief in the night.”  So not only is Jesus identified as coming like a thief at the time of the final judgment of the world, but so, too, are the ones that are coming with Him.  He is called a “thief” because He has taken away all the true blessings of the world, the spiritual blessing of the possibility of salvation and the possibility of having one’s sins forgiven, and so forth.  So God has come in this manner and because He has come in this manner, His people are said to have come in that same kind of manner.  In John 10 we read that Jesus is likened to the “door.”  For example, it says in John 10:9:

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

And, yet, earlier in this same chapter, it said in John 10:1:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

You see, you have to enter in at the “door.”  That is the way to enter into the kingdom of God.  You cannot go up another way.  You cannot go through the “window.”  So that is the big difference between a door and a window.  We have to understand that when God shut the door of the ark, it meant that no one could enter in.  God had completed His salvation plan for the world of that day.  Eight souls (were saved), and that was it.  And, yet, even as the rain came, there was a window on the ark that Noah could look out of and the other people on the ark could look out of it and see the condition of the world as it worsened.  The torrential downpour of the flood came and lifted the ark up, and they began to sail around.  They could see the complete destruction  of the earth out that window of the ark.  Then later, in the proper time, Noah sent forth a dove out the window to search to see if it could find a place for the soul of its foot.  (We discussed that when we went through Genesis 8.)  The dove went out, and it did come back in through the window, but that is a different matter because the dove represented the Holy Spirit.  No man could enter into the ark through the window. 

The only way into that ark was through the door, and that teaches us that once the door was shut, no one else could be saved.  God judged the world by shutting the door.  Once he shut Noah and his family inside, He shut the rest of the people of the world out.  And that sealed their fate.  They all perished in the flood.  Likewise, God has shut the door to heaven.  As we just read in John 10:9, Christ is the door and if anyone entered through that door, they could become saved.  But God shut that door after the day of salvation had come to that tremendous climax with the worldwide proclamation of pending judgment, and the warning that people should go to God and beseech Him for mercy and seek Him while He might be found, up until the date of May 21, 2011.  God used that worldwide message to save everyone who was to be saved whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  And He did find them with His Word, and His Word did accomplish the purpose it was sent forth to do.  Then God shut the door, and from that time until the end of the world, no one else can enter in through that door and, therefore, no one can become saved.  It is the action of God.

So we have to understand that about a “window,” although we do read of men going out windows in order to escape danger from the pursuit of the enemy.  We do not read of anyone coming in through a window in order to be delivered.  At least I cannot find anything like that in the Bible.  The statement in John 19:1 that says that those who climb up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber, and that is not a good thing.  When we look at what the Bible says concerning other kinds of gospels, remember when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers, He said they had made His Father’s house “a den of thieves.”  They were thieves and robbers, and that points to those in the churches and congregations that did not have the patience to leave salvation in the Lord’s hand and wait for Him to save in the day of salvation, but they would “go in another way.”  So they developed another gospel, a free will gospel, where you can accept Christ at any time – day or night – at any point in your life, whether young or old.  It is in your hands and under your control.  You can enter into the kingdom of God whenever you please by saying the “magic words.”  But God is saying, “No.”  You can think that.  You can believe that, if you want, but it is not true, and it is not what the Bible teaches.  The Bible says that salvation is of JEHOVAH.  Salvation is under His control, and He will save whom He will save.  He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and anyone trying to get themselves saved by their own work of faith – baptism in water, or giving a million dollars, or going on hundreds of mission trips, or any other kind of work – cannot get around what Jesus said in John 3: “Ye must be born again.”  That is the only way that one could get into God’s holy heaven, and John 1 tells us that we are not born of the will of man, but of God.  It is God’s decision and His determination, and He has made it.  He predestinated certain ones to become saved: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”  God made choice.  God then sent forth His Word to find those that He had chosen before the world was, and He applied His Word and the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus to those souls and their sins were covered, and they became saved.  And God did that throughout the generations until, finally, He completed that process, and there was no more blood “in the basin,” and we can look at the Word of God as that hyssop that was dipped in the blood and applied to those sinners in the day of salvation. 

Now we have the churches still using the language and words of the Bible concerning salvation, election, going to God for mercy, and citing verses in the Bible that had to do with the day of salvation, and they are saying these things without the power and the blessing of God behind their words because God has so decreed that the truth of the Bible, the true Gospel, is that which is declared only in its proper time and season.  And if someone takes a commandment of God that once was in its proper place…for example, if you read of the sacrifices in the Old Testament, and you said, “I am going to be faithful to God, and I am going to keep those sacrifices in the New Testament era.”  Wrong – you have done wickedly.  You have done evil.  You have taken that which was once faithful for an Old Testament Jew, and you have misplaced it in our time, and it is not a good thing at all.   You are out of the proper time and season.  Or, if you read of the Saturday Sabbath, as the Seventh Day Adventists do, and they say, “Here we are in the New Testament times, but Saturday is still the Sabbath because our founder saw a vision concerning the Fourth Commandment.”  No – you have done wickedly.  You have done wrong.  You are out of the proper time and season, and there is no blessing upon that.  That brings the wrath of God.  Or, if someone takes the fact that God had commanded His people to go to a New Testament church and be under the authority of the pastors, elders and deacons, as well as partaking of the Lord’s Table and being baptized and having their family members baptized, and if that person says, “Well, that is what we have to do.  We have to go to church.”  No – they would be doing wickedly.  God has ended the church age.  We are no longer to go to the churches.  They are out of the proper time and season.  And it is the same thing regarding salvation.  Yes – you can find all kinds of verses that encourage people to approach to God, boldly going to the throne of grace and crying out, like blind Bartimaeus, beating upon your breast like the publican, crying out to God to save you.  And, yet, that language was for the day of salvation, and we have gone beyond that. 

We have entered into Judgment Day and the door is shut and, therefore, God is not listening.  He is not listening, and He is not going to answer those kinds of prayers.  They are out of season.  And for those that stubbornly insist that God must continue to save, they are doing the same things as these others have done about their preferred doctrines that they insist upon. 

Now all we can do, if we desire to pray for someone, is to say, “Having had mercy, have mercy upon this person, O, Lord.  O, Father, having had mercy, have mercy.  Having delivered them, deliver them.  Open their eyes, having opened their eyes and give them your Spirit, having given them your Spirit.”  We always have to phrase it in such a way that it is Biblical and faithful to the things the Bible teaches and, therefore, it must be acknowledged that God could have saved someone prior to that date of May 21, 2011, because that was the end of the day of salvation.  Now we can pray that the Lord draw that person: “Could it be that you might have saved them in the past, and now will you draw them?”  We can pray those kinds of prayers, but we dare not go to God and request that He save someone still dead in their trespasses and sins and to make them alive.  It will not happen.  It is not possible at this point in time.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will look a little more at Abimelech looking out a window and what it means that he sees Isaac and his wife Rebekah sporting together.